A Poem: If This Budget Bought You, You're Cheap...

I don't often write poetry, and there's probably a good reason for that as evidenced below, but I scribbled this down onto my phone on the way into work this morning and I wanted to share it with you.

(Here's a little bit of cringe-inducing context from someone who didn't expect the sugar tax annoucement yet happened to have motorbiked in to Westminster to dominate the airwaves: https://youtu.be/YX5hnGQE7N4)


If this Budget bought you, you're cheap
But look, here's Jamie Oliver dancing.

If you find it easy to fall off straight to sleep
Whilst upon the poor and weak Osborne softly creeps
Cutting help for the disabled
Taking food from off their table
And putting it all into banks.
If that means that you give thanks
Then all I can do is sadly weep
If this Budget bought you, you're cheap
But look, here's Jamie Oliver dancing.

He's dancing for the sugar tax
Though he likes to avoid the facts
About his own sugary past
He'd prefer the poor were forced to fast
As long as obesity rates drop right down
Leaving them a withered stick with a skinny frown
Because certain things escape the rates
And most of these are Jamie's mates
Whilst a diabetic counts the pennies
To save themself from Osbourne's levies
Jamie can comfortably rest
Knowing that he's done his best
For Dave and Ian, May and Hunt
Whilst low income families get the shunt
Yet corporations reap generous offers
Designed to stuff their greasy coffers
Tax for them is down some more
As bailiffs knock on tattered doors
To drag you from your one room shack
Paid for by work that broke your back
But they still said that you were fit
Though it hurts now just to sit
Once you got help with your healthcare
But thanks to their cuts it's just not there
And no new housing's going up
The trickle just fills the rich man's cup
Haggard from your lack of sleep
All you can do is sit and weep
If this Budget bought you, you're cheap
But look, here's Jamie Oliver dancing.

What now then for our next generation?
The one for which this was a "celebration",
Or at least that's how the Chancellor span
And dutifully what the press pack ran
If you can save just four thousand quid
You'll get a gift from Uncle Gid
But who really has that cash to spare
When every month you tear out your hair
To earn that much you worked for a degree
And found yourself with a hefty fee
Then the jobs they just weren't there
And the one you got did not pay fair
Whilst rents keep rising, so does your debt
You wonder how much worse can it get
Before other people start to see
The injustice and inequality
But you hear nothing, not a peep
And all you can do is sit and weep
If this Budget bought you, you're cheap
But look, here's Jamie Oliver dancing.

What is fairness? What is right?
What makes these people want to fight
And walk the towns with signs and banners
As our PM sneers at the manners
Of a good man's suit, of the knot of his tie,
It just makes me want to cry
And turn to strangers in the street
Why are you not here, up on your feet?
Because if you smile at what you've wrought
If this Budget has you bought
And those less fortunate are ignored
Because there's a bit more you can afford
Then I despair, I really do
At what desire burns in you
A selfish little petty grab
Who cares whose back you have to stab
I'm all right Jack, you'll blissfully blab
Tax their sugar, they've too much flab...
You'll get your pound of flesh, my friend
And I'll be there when it comes to an end
It won't last, this fabrication
Your idea of a "Great" nation
And I'll be happy when it crumbles
I'll brag then, I won't be humble
And remind you of who you were
The day the Tories made you purr
The day you were bought
and sold
nice and cheap

No longer will we sit and weep...

Look...

Now we are all dancing.


A doff of the cap to Barney Farmer @barneyfarmer for some inspiration on this one.

A Coupling

"It'll just give rise to people marrying their pets or farm animals!" cried Harold Wiest MP, flapping unrelated papers that he clutched in his chubby fist.

This was when social media went into an expected frenzy, people posting memes of a hastily cut-n-pasted Wiest as the groom in various bestial weddings.

Crol held hir brain pod in hir suckers and despaired. This is what shhe had feared this debate would become once it finally reached the parliaments of Earth.

For all their perceived progress, hir progenitor had told hir, humans are unflinchingly irrational. Shhe was resilient, believing that most people are good. Besides, shhe had fallen in love with one of them.

Love, for hir kind, was a - no pun intended - alien concept. Crol had come to Earth to study philosophy, shhe enjoyed the dilemmas that Earth thinkers would pose for themselves and it opened hir mind to analysing hir own kind in a different light. Though, at first, they had felt superior in the regard of being a species that lacked gender, and therefore lacked any inequality between sexes, they soon discovered that they shared many similiar forms of exclusion and repression familiar to humans and, in instances where the two species were incompatible, new and unique forms of division.

Crol experienced this at a young age, with certain regard to hir fascination and obsession with humans. They used to call hir a dirty gene pool, taunted hir with lurid gestures and doodles of what hir mutant offspring would look like and hir ugly, hairy partner.

If anything this ultimately made Crol reluctant, to the extent that shhe began to try and suppress and deny hir feelings as shhe found hirself falling for one of hir fellow students. Shhe was ashamed, shhe thought he would undoubtedly be repulsed by hir because of who shhe had lead hirself to believe shhe was. Made incapable of looking beyond the torment of cruel, narrow attitudes.

He didn't reciprocate hir feelings, though he spoke so eloquently in class and seemed so reasonable and understanding he was also unable to transcend the superficial differences that had been created between the species.

We, humanity, had thought we were such an understanding and enlightened species, having fought for centuries to eliminate racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, discrimination of all forms. It became obvious to those who had been blissfully ignorant that many of these are battles never truly won, that blinkered tolerance is not the same as true unconscious equality. These beings that came to our planet reawakened a wealth of dormant prejudices that embarrassed us as a species.

People would hold up examples of protest from our seemingly distant past, people picketing against integration, against mixed race couples, against same sex couples, and they would say; "Look how foolish and short-sighted these people seem now." As if that were enough to crumble the foundations of hard-wired bigotry.

It had been someone reaching out to hir in the end. Shhe had retreated, feeling admonished by his rejection, as if he were confirming hir worst expectations, what humans had shouted at hir in the street; "There's no place for your kind here."

When he was questioned about it by his friends they always, with a telling lack of sensitivity, leapt towards the most lurid of questions; "Yeah, but how do you do it?" Tact soon left him and he told his friends to "just fuck off", and this seemed to help them understand.

He had rubbish thrown at him as he walked down the street, names shouted from strangers, threatening letters sent to his home and his family, once somebody posted a dead squid through his letterbox with a note saying, in angry scrawl, 'Why don't you marry it?'

It was in part because they had become the figureheads of the campaign to legalise inter-species marriage, and it was on this subject that Harold Wiest MP was harrumphing like a stuck pig. Those people who bleated the rhetoric of marrying pets seemed to wilfully overlook the issue of mutual compliance and how "Meow", "Moo", "Baa" or "Quack" is no subsitute for "I do".

It wasn't even that he and Crol wanted to get married, they just wanted equality, we cannot live in a world where there's one rule for some and another rule for everyone else. We cannot put in caveats to the detriment, exclusion and alienation of others. It would drive them both insane that people seemed to be afraid of an unknown corrupting force, one that would make them - against their will - change who they are, becoming a prisoner of some imposed way of life that they fundamentally disagreed with. Oh, the irony, that others might be forced to live lives - against their will - that strangulate and confine them, make them behave the way people expect and want them to, to wear masks, to deny their right to be themselves.

"Do you ever stop to think," Crol said, looking towards Harold Wiest MP, who could not hold hir gaze, "what it would be like to not be the dominant kind?"

That's all shhe wanted to say, because shhe didn't enjoy confrontation and despite how much it hurt hir, how shhe trembled inside as shhe saw people trying to prevent hir from being hirself, shhe could never bring hirself to want to dismantle someone else's beliefs. Shhe just wanted them to afford others the same courtesy that shhe gave them.

Shhe wished shhe was a more aggressive type, then shhe'd snatch Harold Wiest MP from his bed and take him back to another planet, one intolerant - unlike hir's - of humankind. He'd be put on show, ridiculed, made to feel exactly how shhe feels when he talks - with no regard for anyone but himself - about putting restrictions on the freedom of others.

And other planets, other species, did hate humankind. They were amused, though wearied, by our enduring intolerance. It was outsiders who brought us interstellar travel, who brought us technology beyond our comprehension, things they were capable of because they had - long ago - moved beyond petty bickering over, what they considered, trivial matters. The ethnicity, the sexuality, the beliefs of others were almost irrelevant to what a unified planet could achieve. Whilst arguments will never cease it is at least more noble to argue for something worthwhile other than the constructed and perceived inferiority of one race or class or gender or persuasion to another.

Other planets thought us petulant, stroppy toddlers, and maybe it's because we're a young planet? A young species. But, still, these differences never really occured to many of them amongst themselves.

Shhe wanted to prove them wrong, he wanted to prove them wrong, they turned their love over as a willing symbol, an act of public defiance and whilst the voice of fear and hatred is often louder and more startling, the voice of hope and reason and love - though shy - is larger, and ultimately stronger. It just needs to push. It just needs to break through.

They held one another close, and waited for the votes to be counted, and waited for the voices to be heard.

Life Outside

I run a bath, tickling my fingers in the water, checking the temperature is just so. As the tub fills I pace the bathroom in my robe, daylight framing the closed shutters on the window. There's a weary glumness to the light inside the room, a sombre sadness to this early Summer afternoon.

Afterwards I try to find Tilly and the children, they're somewhere in the house, but with our wealth of rooms they could be anywhere, and my cries are swallowed up by the expanse. Eventually, I hear Margot's laughter coming from one of the guest bedrooms, and I discover, to their great amusement, that they've turned the bed's blankets and pillows into a fort.

"No Daddy!" Alex commands as I step forward to search for them, "You can't come in."

After a circular discussion in which I try to bargain my way into the fort I go downstairs to the dining room. Lunch has been served, and I ring the bell to let the family know, expecting the temptation to bring them running.

The kitchen staff have shyed away from me recently, since I dismissed Tiago - my last lunch chef - to the outside. They tend just to notify me once the meals have been served, and the waiting staff - at dinners - have perfected an almost invisible art of clearing plates and presenting the successive courses.

"What did he do?" Tilly had asked, removing her jewellry as we prepared for bed that evening.

I told her that he had this neck tattoo, a bloody skull, I hadn't noticed it before, and I'm sure it wasn't new. Perhaps, I posited, he had been covering it with make-up and it had slipped his mind. Tilly agreed that it was most inappropriate, not something we would want the children to be exposed to.

After lunch I logged into the office cloud, I had a meeting with the other MDs, each beamed in from their respective studies. I made sure that I was framed by my bookshelf in the webcam's view, father had told me that this would give off a positive and knowledgable perception, and I carefully noted what my colleagues had chosen as their backdrops.

There was a flat beige wall, a world map, a garden view, a Miro painting, and another had also chosen a bookshelf, though his was less impressive - mine heaved with hardback tomes, his was rife with paperback page-turners; I considered flagging this up to the Chief Executive as an item of concern.

More frustrating though, Alfred - who lives in a very pleasant pile near Haslemere - was clearly wearing his pajamas to the meeting, whereas the rest of us were in suit and tie. I scribbled a note, to remind myself of this.

After the meeting I went into the garden, the sun was at its apex, so there was a warm, flat light over the grounds. I enjoy this time of day best, since having the high walls installed I've missed sunrise and sunset, but in the summer especially this time of day is most pleasant.

Tilly had come out into the garden to, she was in a lounger by the pond.

"Were you kicked out of the fort?" I asked, strolling over and taking an orange from the fruit bowl besider her.

"The kids got bored, realised it was a lovely day and wanted to play outside."

I dig my finger into the skin, it resists my efforts to tear a chunk away and begin peeling.

"Where are they now?"

She looked up and scanned the garden, my eyes followed, and we found Alex throwing a dinosaur up in the air near the sandpit, and then Margot over by the guardhouse.

I was a little out of breath when I got to her, checked she was okay, and aside from a look of panic - probably a reflection of my own - she seemed fine. I stared up at the guard on duty, a short man, but broad, with a neat grey beard and round glasses.

"Afternoon, sir," he nodded at me.

"Please don't talk to my daughter."

"I hadn't, sir. She was talking at me."

I ushered Margot back towards her mother, standing my ground, watching the guard glancing at me but keeping his eyes fixed on the monitors that showed the perimeter, outside the walls, that showed the people idling around.

"Can't you do something about them?" I asked.

"There's a 10pm curfew in the summer months," the guard said reaching for his tea. "Other than that they can do what they like most afternoons. Got to give the inmates a bit of free time."

"But they could be made to work, do something productive."

"Ay, they do, eight until one in the afternoon, then lunch. Well, they try to. I was talking to a warden, he says it's getting harder to... Well, I shouldn't gossip."

"No," I sized the man up again, "you shouldn't." I tried to make the warning clear, he was lucky to be getting that.

I turned and made my way back to the house.

"Have a good evening, sir," the guard called after me. "Any plans?"

Perhaps it was the jovial tone in his voice, but something about his farewell crawled under my skin. I couldn't sleep that night, tossing and turning in the sheets, which felt damp and clammy against my body.

Tilly called to me from her bed, asked if I wouldn't mind sleeping in another room if I was going to be so restless.

"Are you going to report me?" I joked as I took my quilt and a pillow elsewhere.

I made myself comfy on the sofa, despite the guest rooms I rather fancied falling asleep whilst watching some television. I ordered a hot chocolate from the night staff and went to draw the curtains.

At the end of the garden, by the guardhouse, I could see a light - the tip of a cigarette - the audacity of that man! Smoking on my property without permission. I moved to the phone, but hesitated at the last moment, and I'm not sure entirely sure why, but I suddenly felt that - despite everything - I didn't want to send him away, I wanted to keep him here, this guard, this insipid stranger, as if something about that was a form of punishment.

I went back to the window, the figure had returned to the guardhouse. I drew the curtains, and when I returned to the sofa there was a hot chocolate steaming on the side table.

Turning on the television there was a high pitched whining, a test signal, and a card that read 'Due to unforseen circumstances all programming has been suspended', and behind that a spectrum of colour bars.

I lowered the volume so the whine was barely audible, yet its presence gave me a little comfort, I pulled the quilt over myself and snuggled onto the sofa, sipping at my hot chocolate, letting it softly warm me inside.

Control

I write this from a position of great privilege, able once again to use words to communicate ideas.  I can describe what I like to you, and it can be understood.  Perhaps what I write will convince you to change who you are and how you behave?  Or, perhaps you will feel the need to challenge my views, engage me in a debate?  Or, maybe you shall just ignore this altogether and go on with your life?
    Regardless, it is such a joy to be able to write this down, to have you read it, to know that this exchange - whatever the outcome - has taken place.  Knowing where we have come from, it brings tears to my eyes, sends a chill down my back, I am so glad we have this.
    Many have forgotten, but not too long ago only the most powerful retained the ability to communicate an idea.  Over time the need to converse had been supressed, desires had been replaced, subtly forcing a shift away from more esoteric and provocative pursuits, to those that generated fleeting - albeit sensuous -experiences.  A quick shot of something stimulating became much more highly prized, through careful marketing, than things that offered prolonged stimuli.
    It was a dwindling process, one that began with a gradual removal of ideas from books and songs and films, replacing them bit by bit until all that was left were non-descript occurences, lights, sounds, colours, that were scientifically designed to provoke a response in the participant without offering anything more nourishing intellectually.  People, slowly, unknowingly deprived of information adjusted their palattes to this new entertainment and ultimately no longer craved something that would engage their brains; brains which had begun to atrophy.
    Yet the powerful maintained their intellectual pursuits, and they continued to research ways in which to keep the population at large obedient to their carefully constructed means of satisfaction.
    It became almost Pavlovian, people worked like animals for treats, they completed a task and were rewarded by a light show or a pleasing sound, sometimes a pleasant aroma or a tasty, non-descript biscuit.  We had ceased to have, what we once called, a soul, and instead were little machines, powered by the basest form of desire.  Indeed, the stimulus would always provoke our most primal desires, our bloodlust through meat, our sexual urges, or giddy thoughtless laughter, like tickling a baby.  All these feelings they were able to encourage through these programmed displays, or chemical catalysts, and we, merely content to indulge ourselves, lapped it up.
    But the powerful were naive in their own pursuits, for they did not create anything new, merely content to amass more and more power, they ultimately drowned in their own selfishness and wealth, letting their imaginations atrophy.  Eventually all they were was the gluttonous heads of the colonies, an army of drones beneath them, not a true thought to share between the lot of them.
    So, how did we get back?  How did we reclaim that which we had forgotten made us truly human?
    It was simple, given time, if you wind things one way it will, like a spring coil, one day snap back.  There were anamolies, little squeaks of - what they would have once called - dissent, and fear managed to quell this to begin with.  Those who saw the questioning act would retaliate, unable to attribute consequences to their violent actions, they would literally stamp out a little anarchist at the first sign, taking pleasure in the grim satisfaction that an adrenal act of violence can offer the simplest and most ignorant of people.
    But you can't keep quieting the voice, and over time, painfully slowly, it grew louder and the powerful did not know how to contend with it.  For in the end, there is nothing stronger than a good idea, and that is what they lacked, and as others became able to wonder why things had to be the way they had been made to be, they began to see the strings and follow them up to the hands that puppeteered them, to the control that they never knew existed, and rather than just cut their strings they pulled on them, they tore their puppet-masters down from the sky and let them see the world of their creation, the horrible world that we had all accepted.
    So language was born again, and whilst I must revel in its ressurection, I can't help but worry that we have learnt nothing from our suffrage, that one day we will complacently let the powerful herd us once more, and the voices of dissent will be dismissed and muffled, and when we finally come to realise the control that has imprisoned us, we will realise that we no longer have the means to communicate about it.
    I hope you realise the gift you have, that I can write this and that you can read it, and however it may stir you, I hope that we never find ourselves controlled again.